From the Ground Up
by feralhand
Summary: This is how it's built, this is how it burns.


Some days, the goings on at the Wammy's House were so commonplace that the institution could be mistaken for a run-of-the-mill private school. From afar, it was impossible to tell that the children were pouring over material meant for students twice or three times their age, and that when they gave presentations before their peers, they spoke with an uncanny elegance and precociousness. After all, they slugged forlornly to their desks before class and rowdily rushed out onto the gardens with jump ropes and footballs during recess. It didn't matter that, often times, one or more would stop and gawk at an event on the street with a sort of hostile curiosity, or that several of their number (if not every single one in each their own way) harbored half-sane behaviors and kooky mannerisms unabashedly practiced no matter the degree of disturbance, disgust, or bafflement on the faces of those watching. Regardless of what side of the wrought iron gate one stood on, it was unanimously accepted that the lack of parents to and from the grounds played a part in the deviance of the pupils. Winchester pitied them as less fortunate individuals but didn't spare too much concern. So yes, some days, apart from the minutiae of their daily lives, the orphans and their House appeared to be quite normal.

Today was not one of those days.

A cacophony of miserable groans, nervous whispers, and hesitantly excited laughter filled the dining hall—which, in stark contrast to its regular, morning state, was hung with darkness. The tall windows on the far wall were shuttered up tight and not even a sliver of light shown through them, and an infinite electric hum nourished all the little fears children tend to have about unlit rooms and the boogeyman. Absent from the sensory field was the scent of buttered biscuits and toasted breads of all kinds, eggs prepared every which way, teas, coffees, juices, fresh fruits and sweet jam spreads, and the usual assortment of breakfast meats. The only smell that greeted Wammy's pupils was that of the building's familiar musk and dust, and that of disinfectant.

They hovered at the mouth of the room, clambering like penguins at the edge of an ice floe. The crowd remained there and grew in size, like a clot in the hall that was a vital artery of Wammy's House. Lagging behind everyone else was Matt. The children that turned at the sound of his hand-held console's music did not seem surprised by his belated arrival. Only within the last few steps did he spare a glance from his game, and through his disheveled, overgrown bangs, finally notice what was going on (or rather, wasn't).

"Oi, Matt!" Dahlia pushed through the crowd to intercept her target. "Is today special or something?" She was practicing her Yorkshire accent, but her natural Italian was audible in that last word. Matt noticed but didn't remark on it. Sleepily, his eyes fell on his console's screen where he could check the day's date.

"May twenty-first," he mumbled. After a few seconds, he added, "there's a Chilean holiday today. The Battle of..." Matt's voice faded until all that was left was a long, absentminded blank space. Although forgetfulness was condemnable in a school such as Wammy's, he didn't seem all that bothered by his present predicament.

"Iquique," someone said. On the periphery of the gathering there stood one of a sparse number of scholastic outcasts that lingered at the Wammy's House. He took the tip of his thumb in his teeth and nibbled it, then uttered in an airy way, "I was just looking for mister Ruvie. I can't seem to find him." With just this simple, offhanded statement, he propelled their discourse in another direction.

"What, the headmaster is missing?" Dahlia squeaked in alarm. Nearby children bristled at the notion, and their collective volume rose a couple of notches. Voices of fear, of objection, of disbelief fought for control of the whole.

Until.

Though quiet, the voice of logic, as per usual, prevailed. "The kitchen staff aren't cooking. Only the headmaster can give an instruction such as this." The very last to student of the House arrived just in time to make this statement. His nearest neighbor started.

"Near!" the neighbor, a girl with the alias Pazuzu, exclaimed with her hand over her heart. The boy's soft socks and taciturn manner lent itself to sudden, sometimes startling appearances. Now that he was announced, however, Near's glaring white outfit made him easy to pick out amongst his peers.

"Are the kitchen staff gone as well?" saying this, the ex-student that had been standing with Matt and Dahlia moved toward the dining hall's entryway. "Let's turn on the light." Accepting this decision, the masses reluctantly let the young man through and into the room. He found the light switch with little difficulty, and with a small click, the sconces lining the walls began to radiate a gentle yellow light. The more powerful overhead florescent lights required a key, however.

Inviting himself, the group's self-appointed leader strode fearlessly into the hall. "As I suspected," he remarked, blatantly ignoring the out-of-place shelving, television monitors, disc players and seemingly haphazard tangle of cords. He made a beeline for the attached kitchen. Meanwhile, the students formed a spontaneous semicircle before the mountain of unexplained equipment.

Murmurs of, "we probably shouldn't touch it," prefaced guilty grabs, tugs, and presses of remote controls and buttons. Matt, with unheard of gusto, shoved a lower ranked student aside in order to get to a laptop sitting far to the left. While Iscariot attempted to find something other than static on the airwaves and someone was barking about the lack of a cable hookup or antenna, Mello was snaking up to each one of the disc players and hitting eject. Each tray, empty.

"You're not trying to break into it, are you, Matt?" This was a question, but Near wasn't really asking.

Likewise, Matt wasn't really answering when he said, "no," and stroked the return key to clear a dialog box from the screen. With it gone, the login field was visible. His fingers worked like lightning over the keyboard, filling the blank text areas. The dialog box popped up, signaling system rejection. He tried again.

"Do Ruvie's birthday!" Dahlia urged, crashing on the floor beside Matt. She was promptly hounded by students who thought the idea stupid.

Matt didn't say anything at all. As a matter of fact, he appeared completely unaffected by the chaos spinning around him. He didn't notice when the noise lulled, either; or when Near shuffled back and Dahlia scooted away from him, or as footsteps heavier than any of the students' approached him. As far as Matt knew, it was completely uncalled for the way Mello, out of nowhere, kicked him in the knee.

Glancing up, Matt noticed the room had darkened to pitch black. The hazy light from a couple television monitors made the staring eyes of his peers visible. Blankly, he tipped his head back. As his bangs slipped out of his face, he made out the subtly illuminated form of their headmaster, mister Ruvie, looming over him. Right at that moment, the laptop chimed, accepted the last entered user/pass combination, and loaded its desktop. The headmaster frowned.

Matt gave up the laptop without argument. Although mister Ruvie said nothing, it was understood between them that there would be consequences for what had just occurred.

Having readjusted the laptop, mister Ruvie began moving to each of the disc players and inserting an unlabeled, unmarked disc. The students sorted themselves into an attentive audience on the floor while their headmaster briefly explained what was happening and finished his preparations. "Before you are fifteen monitors. In a few moments, each will play a different video. After the last video is complete, you will each be individually tested on your retention. The results of this test will immediately influence your class rank, so pay attention."

"Mister Ruvie?" mewled one of the children. She received only a half-interested hum from the headmaster. "What about breakfast?"

His answer was curt. "It's been rescheduled. All eyes forward, if you please." The old man hit a key on the laptop and every monitor's screen turned from static to plain blue. Then, the videos commenced in sync.

Only six started from their beginning, the rest were somewhere in their middle. Four were animated features. Four others were pure text displays, some rolling like credits, others like slideshows. Of the remaining seven, there were two news recordings, one talk show recording, a documentary, and three fictional films. It was difficult to dissect what audio belonged to which video, but only three of the total—not including the text videos—were in English. None had ever been exposed to the students before, at least not during their stay at the Wammy's House.

The dining hall was in a constant state of strobe light and the noise bordered on unbearable. Still, the only occupant amongst them that could have chosen not to be there—the ex-student—remained. Leaning in the threshold between the dining hall and kitchen, the young man watched the monitors from a distance, his eyes unblinking, his brow arced with the slightest bit of curiosity.

Some of the videos stopped before others. Several cut out mid-scene and mid-sentence. A couple of the screens froze up, never to continue. For the last seven minutes of the class, as it were, there was only one video left and it played to the end of its credit roll.

When the lights came on, some of the children had wet faces, their cheeks running with tears as they'd gone without blinking too long. Many complained that they couldn't see under the bright lights, or that it hurt, and they squinted or kept their eyes closed. Despite the burning sensation, Mello broke open his reddened eyelids and looked for his rival. Due to his albinism, it was possible that Near's eyes were compromised and that he may have more trouble with this evaluation than others. The way he was crouched, with his hand over his face, didn't lead Mello to any definite conclusions.

They were granted ten minutes to recover, after which mister Ruvie had them scatter across the room. Like this, each was presented with a sheet of questions and a pencil. They worked on the floor. There was utter silence for another ten minutes. Then, the room was disturbed by the sound of shuffling. One child stood up and went to hand in his paper.

It was Matt.

Mister Ruvie accepted the paper and in passing said, "see me in the vestry in an hour." The ominous instruction rolled off Matt easily. Only when he was close enough to put his hand on the doorjamb did he pause and turn back to survey his classmates. They all remained bowed over their papers in awkward positions that were sure grow painful if they didn't soon complete their assignment.

From across the room, Matt caught the ex-student leering his way. There was nothing inherently terrible about the way the young man used the back of his hand to wipe traces of runaway jam from the corner of his mouth, and yet the way it was done affected Matt in a terrible way. He hastily slung himself out the door and into the hall, and so he missed B's thin, deliberate smile.

* * *

09.01.09, 09.24.10

Author's Notes: Yeah. I keep finding these old fics I've half-written. This one is over a year old. I have completely forgotten where I was going with this story, but I decided to finish this chapter (finally) and stick it up here. By the by, this is in the same fannon as _And Hope to Die_ and _Status Quo_.

Disclaimer: Death Note ain't mine, but the named characters you don't recognize are.


End file.
